I recently caught up with my former high school hockey coach, Mike Quenneville, now head coach of University of Alabama's Division III club hockey team, as they played at nationals in Vineland, N.J. Also, I chatted with Buddy Damare, who was a major contributor and vision behind the team.

“Bama Hockey” debuted with the 2005-06 season. That first season, each of the 15 tryouts made the team. A short seven years later, 47 players tried out but only 30 made the cut. It costs a player $1,200 to skate with the team.

Quenneville was part of two national titles as an assistant coach for the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Then he was head coach of Bob Jones High School in Madison, Ala. I played for him for two seasons while at Bob Jones from 2002-2004, winning a state title in 2004.

Quenneville started as a Bama Hockey assistant coach in 2007. He took over as head coach when former coach Jeff Cheeseman stepped down because of health issues.

At times, Quenneville drives five times per week from Huntsville to Birmingham for practices and home games. That drive is about the same distance from Hershey to Philadelphia.

The road schedule is even rougher. Arkansas is a nine-hour drive to the northwest, while Central Florida is a seven-hour trip to Orlando, Fla. The most rugged trip for the team involved seven games in a 17-day period, stretching from the Schupan Tournament in Michigan all the way down to Florida for tilts against South Florida and Florida Gulf Coast.

Bama Hockey (the team also is called the Frozen Tide) hosted a major weekend of games in Huntsville, Ala. Competition was tough including Cal Northridge, Hope College (Michigan), Central Florida, Florida Gulf Coast and the University of Colorado. Each team played three or four games in the four days.

Most Southeastern Conference colleges have hockey teams. But because of licensing reasons, the league is known as the Southeastern Collegiate Hockey Conference. All these teams play in the ACHA Division III level inthe Southern division.

In football, in-state rivals Alabama and Auburn duke it out each year in the Iron Bowl. On the ice, it’s a brawl for the Iron Cup, a three-game series that started with the 2011-12 season and will become an annual tradition. The three-day attendance was more than 8,000.

The top 10 teams in the region go on to play in regionals. From there, the top four teams are invited to the national tournament. Seven years into Bama Hockey's existence, they were on their way to nationals.

Losses to California University of PA, Hope College and Cal Northridge left the team at 0-3 for the nationals. Quenneville called it a learning experience for next year.